Our critics have turned your 'Hamlet' into an allegory; they will not even allow Shakspeare to paint mankind, but insist on his embodying qualities.

They turn poetry into metaphysics, and truth seems to them shallow, unless an allegory, which is false, can be seen at the bottom.

Again, too, with our most imaginative works we mix a homeliness that we fancy touching, but which in reality is ludicrous.

We eternally step from the sublime to the ridiculous; we want taste." "But not, I hope, French taste.

Do not govern a Goethe, or even a Richter, by a Boileau!" said Trevylyan.
"No; but Boileau's taste was false.